Arts
Voices of the world
‘Don’t take it for granted,’ she warned. ‘It’s one of the few places where you can hear diverse voices, different…
Culture buff
I’m oversensitive to criticism of Australia by famous authors. Richard Flanagan, elated at winning the Man Booker Prize for The…
The only way is Essex
We are told this is now a ‘knowledge economy’. Strange, then, that there are so few recent educational buildings of…
Ballet’s battle royal
English ballet erupted out of the second world war in the hands of the rival choreographers Frederick Ashton and Robert…
Cultural revolution
We have read about the remarkable opening up of China in recent years: how many people live there and how…
Cultural revolution
We have read about the remarkable opening up of China in recent years: how many people live there and how…
Supreme painter of the inner life
Martin Gayford sees Rembrandt’s late works at the National Gallery – is this the greatest show on earth?
Surviving the Soviets
Ismene Brown talks to the Russian super-couple Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin about ballet, opera and the KGB
East up West
David Baddiel has turned his movie, The Infidel, into a musical. The set-up is so contrived and clumsy that it…
The price test
If you wanted to find a middle-aged man in a bright orange suit, matching tie and sneakers, Frieze is a…
Signifying nothing
Fury is a second world war drama that plays with us viscerally and unsparingly — I think I saw a…
Screwed up
We all know that ‘They fuck you up your mum and dad’, but nowhere is this more reliably (and violently)…
Girl power
It was when she said how she loved ‘watching the computer do exactly what you wanted it to do’ that…
Home again
One of the more welcome and surprising things about television at the moment is that Homeland (Channel 4, Sunday) is…
Culture buff
A highly successful tour of European festivals is a great boost to an orchestra. Not just to morale but to…
Leigh’s late flowering
Hermione Eyre talks to filmmaker Mike Leigh about Mr Turner, Hollywood, and making films his own way
Art from another planet
‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966…
What iff?
Would musical history have turned out differently if Alexander Glazunov hadn’t been smashed out of his wits when he conducted…
Blood and lust
Virtue, hide thyself! The Coronation of Poppea opens with a warning and closes with a love duet for a concubine…
Boys alone
GCSE Eng Lit pupils are doing well from dance this season with two set books told in the medium of…
Girls aloud
The age of ‘ladies first’ is back. Phyllida Lloyd reserves all the roles for the weaker sex, as I imagine…
See it and sleep
Take tissues to The Best of Me, I’d read, as it’s such a weepie, so I took tissues, being a…
Hoard games
Detectorists (BBC4) is a sad git’s niche comedy that would never have been commissioned if it hadn’t been written and…
Radio Three-fall
The new controller of Radio 3 has at last been appointed. Alan Davey (not to be confused with the former…
Culture buff
Happy is the theatre company that can enjoy the regular services of a genuine international star, as admired on stage…
